There's More Than Surviving With Sarah Nannen

Sarah Nannen got the worst news of her life on a sunny day in 2014: her husband, Reid, had been killed in a military aviation accident. With four kids in tow, Sarah began walking the unexpected road of widowhood. We're talking about how the reality of death in the military often looks like "compartmentalizing the elephant," how breaking the news of a death to kids is the first of many conversations, and how faith in the aftermath of loss is more about actively hoping than it is about religion.

Transcript

Sarah,

I'm delighted to have you here on Coming Back today.

You are an oft-requested guest here on Coming Back so I'm thrilled to share your story with people who've been waiting to hear from you but also to introduce your story to people who have never met you before or do not know of your work.

So we'll start where we start all of our interviews and ask you to share your lost story today.

Thank you for that invitation.

I'd be happy to,

Shelby.

My story started in 2014 when I was living on a military base in Japan with four kiddos,

One of whom was a newborn.

Like you see in the movies,

One sunny Sunday morning a bunch of Marine Corps officers came to my front door dressed in their finest uniforms.

Without saying a word,

I knew they were there to give me the worst news of my life.

That proceeded to sort of unfold into this flurry of events that involved memorials in Japan followed by an international plane trip with four kids under the age of five,

Relocating to temporary home base in my parents' house in Illinois where we were from and beginning this really intense soul-searching journey of scraping together life on the other side of losing my beloved husband of 14 years.

That's the cliff notes version of the story.

And I think that's a perfect place to start.

It's kind of just enough to jump in with and I think the first thing that I want to start with,

Listeners don't know this,

But we're recording on September 11th,

And I want to just acknowledge that the entirety of this,

The setting of this,

Your element of this,

Your husband's element of this is all military-centric focused revolving.

And this is an area,

Truthfully,

That's more or less unknown to me.

I have not lived a military life in any capacity.

So I'm wondering if you can bring some perspective to listeners about what it's like to,

I don't know,

Would you call yourself a military wife?

I'm many things.

I'm a military wife.

Now they refer to me as a military widow or a gold star spouse.

There's like an official title for this.

But I'm also a veteran.

I was in the Navy for five years myself.

So I have a lot of perspective into the interesting,

Complex world of military life.

So let's jump in there because I think there's,

I mean even the the gold star designation is something that I have not personally heard before as it pertains to the military.

So I guess what can you tell us about how death and grief operate within the context of the military because there's kind of,

Sometimes it's spoken and sometimes it's less spoken,

That there's always a possibility.

Sure,

That's absolutely true.

And I think that makes it even perhaps a more complex community to talk about death and grief within because one of the primary coping mechanisms for active-duty personnel,

Service members,

As well as their families is we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room and then very,

Very quickly compartmentalize that elephant into whatever coping mechanisms work for us,

Which usually feels a little bit like ignoring it,

So that we can do the job every day,

Whether the job is showing up to the front lines or holding down the fort while you know,

One half of the partnership is away.

And it becomes this really interesting dance when someone does pass.

So I've had the unfortunate experience of friends of mine being killed in action as well as obviously my husband.

And I've also supported friends through the loss of military personnel that I didn't know.

And it's always very interesting that one of the underlying experiences that seems to be quite universal is that we never thought it would happen to us.

And so it makes sense that we would sort of be able to intellectualize the concept of death as something bad that happens to other people,

To unlucky people,

To not us.

And that becomes a sort of coping mechanism.

And I think we see this even seep into the civilian world within police officers and teachers and bus drivers.

We never see it coming.

And it makes sense that that's one of our human kinds ways of coping with the reality that all of us are mortals and will at some point die.

So anyway,

Back to the military,

I think it's a unique part of our population that we have to acknowledge every day on the daily that our job does put us in harm's way in a way that the average accountant's job perhaps does not.

And as a result,

It creates,

I think,

A tighter knit community because we understand that sure,

We're fighting for our country,

But I think when you're in the fight,

You're actually fighting for your own life and the lives of the people beside you.

And it feels that same way in the military spouse world,

The ones who are not necessarily on the front lines,

But the front lines of the home front,

Where acting as a solo parent or the sole operator of a household is,

In its own way,

A huge energetic output daily.

And we,

In the same way,

Really come together and create this family,

This support where you know the people beside you have your back.

And that came in really handy when my husband died because I was living on a small naval base in Japan.

My family was really far away.

And so the people who came to my side first were this really,

Really tight-knit group of six women who I asked to come into my house and they just kind of took over and started taking care of me in a way that was so powerful.

And so I had the benefit of having this really innate core family that wasn't family who understood what it was like to be me.

And at the same time,

I felt this overwhelming sense of and at the same time,

I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness that my friends who were there helping me take care of my kids while I tried to peel myself off the couch to get through the day.

In those first days,

They were also kind of acknowledging the fact that this could be them.

And that was a really,

Really tender source of connection,

I guess,

Between us,

But also really makes the grief process even harder because it forces you to look at the reality of your own life as well.

You mentioned twice,

Actually,

In your introduction story that you had four kids at home when you got the news and you knew on this sunny Sunday when the car was pulling up and these people are walking to your door the news that you were about to receive.

But I think something that a lot of parents struggle with,

Military and non-military alike,

Is breaking the news and then dealing with grief,

But negotiating grief because it often shows up differently depending on age,

On gender,

On school,

On things they've learned thus far in their life.

So I'm wondering,

How did you tell your kids as you had this family,

Not family,

In the house with you and kind of that whole,

How did that whole process lay out?

Because you essentially,

You brought them back to the United States all by yourself on a plane,

Correct?

Yeah.

And so that kind of,

There's a physical energy output that happens there,

But I imagine there was an intense emotional one as well.

This is such a good question and something that I get asked about a lot.

I mean,

As anyone could imagine,

Telling your children their father died is one of the most complicated things you could ever endeavor to do.

And I suppose it started out in real time.

I'm in my house with all of these children and there's a bunch of strange men in uniforms and I'm crying.

So the oldest was five at the time and he said,

Like five-year-olds will do,

Mom,

Why are you crying?

And in that moment,

I knew that the most important thing that I could do for him and his grief was to be as honest as possible at an age-appropriate level for him,

Which takes some discernment,

Of course.

And so I decided I was just going to tell him the truth and include enough information that he was able to be with,

But not too much information and not like kind of leave the unknowns out of it.

So I just kind of went through the process of trying to not like kind of leave the unknowns out of it.

So I said in that moment,

Buddy,

Daddy had a crash and we're not totally sure where he is or if he's okay.

But there's a bunch of people using helicopters to try and find him and help him.

And he just looked at me very matter of fact and said,

Mom,

Don't worry about it.

Helicopters have lights on them.

They'll be able to find him.

And so we kind of let it be at that for that moment and his question really brought me back into the room.

I was pretty dissociated as you can imagine just after finding out that news without a whole lot of answers.

There wasn't a lot of certainty at that point whether or not he had died.

And his question kind of helped me re-engage with the fact that I was in fact a mother in the house with four kids who were in the middle of eating lunch and it sort of progressed from there,

Right?

As more information came online,

There was more dialogue around what was happening,

What we knew,

And what it meant for us.

And so I had a conversation with a really,

Really wise Navy chaplain before I had the more official version once we knew for sure that he had died.

And I kind of asked him for some guidance and what he told me was really,

Really useful.

And I'm guessing this will be useful to people who are listening too.

He just said,

Remember that this is the first of many conversations.

And as your kids each grow and develop emotionally and intellectually,

They will have different experiences with grief along the way.

There'll be some times where they have more questions from almost a scientific point of view.

And there'll be other times where they're feeling a lot of feels from a very emotional point of view.

And sometimes as we all know,

It'll be both.

And that really helped me put into perspective that in that moment again,

The most important thing that I could do was just be really present with my kids and sort of let them guide me so that I could intuitively talk to them in a way that was useful to where they were in that moment.

Knowing that we were creating a relationship where they were allowed to ask me questions,

They were allowed to feel feelings,

And they were allowed to ask me for support with that.

So the first conversation was actually teaching them even what the concept of being alive was.

Because most of us are exposed to the concept of life and death via Looney Tunes,

Where somehow magically that roadrunner just keeps coming back around or we don't have this like concrete finality of death concept down for quite a while.

And so the first lesson was really about what does it mean to be dead and what does it mean to be alive,

Just as importantly.

And so we would use nature to help understand.

So I'm talking to five-year-old,

Four-year-old,

And two-year-old who's really just developing language context at all.

And we were playing this game,

Maybe it's a morbid game,

But this is real life when you've got a father who's passed away.

And we'd look at a tree and I'd say,

Does that tree have life in it or not?

And they would say yes.

And then I would talk about a fake tree.

Does that tree have life in it or not?

Well,

It's a tree,

But it doesn't have life in it,

So no.

And then we'd look at a tree in the woods and one that had fallen down and was in the process of decay.

And they could see how that had life in it previously,

But it currently did not at this point in time.

And it was just a really interesting way for me to process what it meant to be alive and not alive as much as helping them do the same.

And that just kind of opened this long-term dialogue that would ebb and flow.

And my goal ultimately in all of it was to make sure they knew that they could ask me any question and that they didn't have to protect me from the feelings.

And as long as I accomplished those two things,

I was pretty sure I was in the ballpark of doing it right,

If you'll allow me to use air quotes on a podcast.

Yes,

Oh my gosh,

Absolutely.

And I literally wrote down in all capital letters,

This is the first of many conversations with regard to grief with kids.

And I think,

I mean,

It extends far out to grief with everyone.

But as you've said that,

I felt my shoulders go down and it has that same energy of,

Oh,

You don't have to figure it all out today.

And that's something that I think so many of us fall into this trap of,

Okay,

Now that I'm grieving,

I need to be the perfect greever.

This whole,

Just like,

You can't see my hands,

But they're like shaking and building up into this mass in front of my face.

But this whole presence of,

I must have this stature and this facial expression and these vocabulary words and all of this stuff.

And we put such intense pressure on ourselves to get it right and get it right the first time and to not screw this up because it does feel so important.

That death makes the stakes feel really high.

And so to have this chaplain,

I mean,

Wise person that they are to say,

This is the first of many conversations,

AKA,

You don't have to figure this all out today.

You're not just going to have the one talk,

But with the stakes feeling so high,

It can definitely be a challenge.

It can definitely be a challenge.

And so thank you for sharing that with us.

I think that's so important.

I kind of want to pivot into a place of where the outreach to others came from,

Whether that was something that built up in you over time or came from a spark of something that inspires you because so much of your work now is supporting widows and the people who love them,

But then also just grievers in general,

This large umbrella through your coaching work and through your book,

Grief Unveiled and your podcast as well.

So where did that come from for you?

This is a great question too.

The short answer is it came from a dissatisfaction with what was available to me.

I was really,

Really blessed with access to a huge amount of social support,

But also a lot of institutional support.

The military has amazing grief resources.

I was able to go on a widow retreat with an organization set up for military survivors.

I went to therapy because I thought that's what you were supposed to do.

And I just kept being met with this message that this was the way it was going to be.

And my role was to learn how to cope and survive.

I mean,

How many survival skills and coping strategies and stress management workshops can you attend before you start looking for the inspirational speaker room?

And that's kind of where I was at when I went to a workshop that my whole family was attending.

My kids,

My in-laws,

My parents,

I think my sister-in-laws were there.

And this lovely kind-hearted volunteer pulled me aside and she said,

Could I just ask you what your experience has been like here today?

And I'm positive my response was not what she was expecting.

And I felt a little guilty about it,

But I thought if I don't tell the truth,

I'm not actually helping her or this organization.

So I said,

I'm so appreciative that places like this exist that are teaching people survival skills and coping strategies.

And I'm also wondering if you've ever considered that at some point people need more than that.

I could teach your stress management workshop and I could probably facilitate the coping strategies room.

And I would really,

Really love to have a job in the workplace.

And I would really,

Really love to hear from somebody who was on the other side of the debilitating pain,

Who could tell me that it was going to be okay.

And that there was a reason for me to keep going and keep trying and keep seeking for something that felt like it could help me.

And she kind of stopped in her tracks and she was certainly not prepared for that.

And I'm grateful for this and we kind of just moved on with the conversation.

But in that moment,

I realized I had come to a point where I was no longer satisfied with the status quo of what was available and grief support.

And that really initiated a huge seeking journey for me to go into the world and start looking for things that felt like inspiration and that had room for growth and hope and healing.

And that the people who I was dealing with believed in my ability to heal as much as I hoped I could.

And I was along that journey that I realized that I was growing and I was healing and I was transforming.

And one day I looked up and I realized I really,

Really love this life that I never in a million years thought I could truly love.

I thought I could maybe fake it till I make it in that direction and have sort of a scrape together second best kind of life.

But to really feel rooted in the fact that I loved my life and who I was made me feel like it would be a disservice if I didn't tell other people that that was possible.

And so I just started sharing my experience a little more openly,

A little more vulnerably.

And of course,

Coupling that with my mindfulness and yoga training and my coaching perspectives and also this interesting perspective that I brought to it as a former birth doula in addition to a naval officer.

I've worn a lot of hats and tasted a lot of layers of the way you can be a human being in the world.

And so much of what was informed,

What was informing my process was really rooted in how I cared for a laboring woman in childbirth,

One of the most intimate,

Raw,

Potentially overwhelming human experiences we can have and how that was actually very similar to the process of grief.

It was just happening on less of a physical level,

In a place no one could see.

And so that was what led me to begin outreaching with other people.

But I had a moment where a woman who I had never met asked me via a friend if I could come to her home less than 24 hours after she found out she had become a widow.

And it felt really vulnerable for me to say yes,

And yet I felt so called.

So I did.

And what happened there was so powerful that I knew in that moment that this was actually taking me down a whole new path of holding space for the experience of grief,

But also powerfully guiding people through that journey to something on the other side that they didn't know existed yet.

I want to go back to this beautiful visual of supporting somebody who's in labor,

Because,

And even back to the story about telling this inspirational speaker,

Like,

This is all great,

But where's the meat?

Where's the depth of it?

Where's the inspiration?

And I keep getting this sense that you're circling this idea that at some point,

The practical stuff just isn't enough.

Like the tips and the coping mechanisms and the top 10 listicles of ways to ease your pain while grieving,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Like at some point,

You have to turn the intellectual piece of it off and go into the heart piece of it.

And that's,

I mean,

That's the message I'm receiving loud and clear.

Let me know if that resonates with you.

Absolutely,

Really,

My focus is alerting people,

Notifying people that there is more than surviving.

And I think we can get so stuck in surviving the pain.

And unfortunately,

What happens is this idea that time heals all is a really dangerous myth that we get numbed into submission with.

And so when we are told over and over and over that our goal is surviving,

We're called a survivor in a loving way,

Yet there's some real intense internal unconscious messaging that's getting lodged into our sense of self.

And we're projected onto every day with this strange pity and almost like disconnect from other people.

It's so easy to get lost in that world where the only version of life you can see is surviving the rest of the ride.

And I think without people who are willing to be guides and way showers and storytellers and talk about not just the pain and the depth and the complexity of the journey through grief,

But also that it is a journey through and that there is the potential for incredibly fulfilling life.

I mean,

I think it's the most important thing we can do for anybody who's in pain.

Okay,

So I totally am absorbing all of that and I'm like cheering over here.

And the thing that I land on,

I suppose in my own journey personally,

But the thing I hear from listeners of this show too,

Is that people keep telling me that this survival mode,

This where I'm at right now won't last forever and there's something more than this,

But I can't feel it and I can't see it yet.

I can't comprehend.

Like grief brain is a very real thing and you're like,

I just can't see past the first six inches in front of my face.

And yet there are people out here doing the work like yourself and like myself and like all the guests we've had here on Coming Back of,

I love this,

Alerting people to the idea that there's more than just surviving what happened.

So how do you speak to people who are in this place of,

I believe you,

But I just can't see it yet?

Well,

Pretty much every client I've ever had is saying that exact same thing during our first conversation and hey,

I remember being there.

I remember hoping and wishing on a star and praying into being the possibility that there might be joy someday and not being able to fathom how that would be possible.

And so I say this is why we need a guide,

Right?

We need a guide through this intense labyrinth of experience,

Of thought,

Of sensation and even the social world around us so that we can actively find our way through it.

And so I say it's a choice that you can make to show up today and take tiny micro steps forward on behalf of your future self.

And it won't feel like much in the moment perhaps,

Although some small things can mean a huge difference in someone's life.

But there'll come a day where all of those micro steps forward accumulate into a moment of recognition where you've reconnected with your sense of self in present tense and start to have the ability to reflect on what happened but also to begin visualizing,

However hazy it may be,

A better future.

Can you give us some examples of what your personal micro steps were?

Like even reflecting back,

You might not see it when you're living in that moment,

But hmm,

What does that look like now?

Well,

I could probably write a long anthology about all the micro steps that I continue to take on behalf of my future self,

But in the beginning it was really simple.

And one of the things that I teach very early on is giving people some self-regulation practices because I really believe that when we're trying to move beyond surviving grief into a more meaningful lived experience,

We can't actually start with talk therapy.

If we try to intellectualize our way through it,

It will never really feel real,

I believe.

That's a big statement.

Haven't done a PhD in this direction,

But it's coming.

We've got to start with our physical experience because what we know about the human being is that when we are in a moment of stress or duress,

When we experience something that threatens our existence,

Whether it's a physical threat or an experienced one like losing someone you love,

It literally feels like we are going to be exterminated.

We feel like we're going to die.

I can't tell you how,

Like,

You know,

It feels like I'm going to die when we're in that much pain.

And so one of the first things that I work with people on is practices that help them self-regulate their physiological response to grief.

And grief is a very big word.

It's vast.

So of course within grief is sadness,

But it is also anxiety and overwhelm and fear of the future and stress and on and on and on.

And so some of the best things that we can do,

And this was part of my healing journey as well,

Was learning how to use breath practices to bring my physiology back to a state of neutral.

And everybody wants to be happy again,

But when we're in a human experience,

I think neutral is like the new little black dress.

If what neutral is our goal,

We will be able to experience the highs and the lows of life in a much more complete way.

So instead of shooting for happy,

We're shooting for neutral.

And so using things like movement practices and breath practices and even don't tune me out meditation is a really,

Really powerful way to create a physiological landscape within us that allows us to access the mental and emotional piece of healing.

I think that's really wise and it's kind of the word that's coming to mind for me right now is novel at first because usually before grief,

Unless we're versed in yoga,

Meditation,

Breath exercises,

It's not something that I don't know if I can blanket everyone with the average person,

But it's not something I know for me personally,

I didn't participate in.

So I didn't come to these alternative mentalities or modalities of tuning into the body until my mom died and then everything was dialed up in such a way as like,

Is it going to be this hard to focus forever?

But then,

I'm sure you know as well that the continued practice of it,

Just continuing to tune in doesn't make it easier,

But it makes it more of like an autopilot thing.

And the thoughts are still there,

The pain is still there,

But you can get back to this place of reframing your goals of not happiness,

But neutral.

And I think that's really wise and insightful because so much of the world is asking,

What are you going to get back to happy?

And you're like,

That's not even a goal,

That is not on the menu for right now.

I just,

Getting back to happy is not on the menu.

Well,

It puts a lot of pressure on yourself when happy is the rite of passage that lets everybody know you made it,

That you're okay now.

And I want to be careful that people aren't hearing me say neutral is the goal,

And that means settling for crappy.

Neutral really means like,

I'm in a good place,

I'm not high,

And I'm not low.

I'm able to be here in equilibrium.

And particularly when it's physiological equilibrium,

That's the best place to come to life from because you're not reactive,

Right?

You're not having hyper arousal of your sympathetic nervous system trying to fight or flee or rage or like feigned,

Like fall apart.

I'm going a little into the physical side again,

Because I think it's so important for people to understand this isn't just a mental thing.

Your grief isn't a mental thing.

It's not just something in your head.

This is something that is actually powerfully impacting your physical body.

And if you start by tuning in to the basic needs of your physical body and managing the physiological reactions of systems within you that are meant to help you survive,

You will experience all of the difficult things happening in and around you from a completely different place.

So you're right,

It doesn't change the circumstance,

It doesn't change the fact that someone died,

It doesn't change the fact that you're in a really painful life transition,

But it does change the way you engage with that reality and with all of the choices that you'll be asked to make in the aftermath of it.

I want to go in a totally different direction and ask you how your husband enters your space now.

Like where does he exist for you in your life now?

Oh,

I'm so glad you asked me this.

That's one of my favorite things to talk about and it surprises people because it's a topic that people tend to not want to mention because,

Oh,

By the way,

I'm engaged.

And so there's this curiosity around how do you have a love story and also a love story?

And along my grief journey and the exploration of mortality and love and human connection and even dabbling in questions of spirituality in the universe and what happens to our soul when we die,

Not from a religious perspective,

But where is he now?

I can say that along the way he has presented so many moments of connection and engagement with me in ways that would be really easy to dismiss as wacky coincidence or seeing what I wanted to see or dreaming what I needed to dream.

But I chose to sort of catalog all of these moments that were sensed as connection with him,

His name was Reed,

And receive them as just that connection with him wherever he is now.

And as a result,

Two things happen.

Again,

Not to like bring religion into this,

So I'm speaking from this a little bit more metaphorically.

So all of those of you who are listening,

You can keep your beliefs totally intact and this isn't a commentary on any of that,

But the way that I see him now,

Right,

And this goes back to how I talked to my kids about life and death,

Right?

Is there life in that body or not?

I believe that the body is the soul's vehicle to have an experience here on earth.

And when that body dies,

The soul exists somewhere.

I don't know where,

I don't know how,

I don't know why,

But it's out there somewhere.

And the way that I see it essentially is that Reed is my caseworker on behalf of the universe.

And so whenever this incredible universe conspires on my behalf,

It speaks the language of love that Reed and I shared.

So it'll be in the stories,

In the songs,

In the numbers that were meaningful to us.

And it's really just a nod from the great unknown out there that I'm on the right path,

That somebody's got my back,

And that it's going to be okay.

The other piece of it is people want to know,

How do I grieve?

What does my grief feel like now?

And that answer has changed over the course of time.

Not because time heals all,

But because I've really intentionally been in contact with my grief and in observation of my grief.

And the best way,

The most honest way that I can talk about my grief now is this incredibly sweet nostalgic gratitude for what was.

It's like a memory I have of me baking cookies with my grandma when I was probably five.

And I was wearing one of her aprons that was way too big for me.

And it was just us the whole day with the smell of baking and the taste of fresh whipped up batter on the spoon.

Like that kind of sweetness that you're so grateful that you had.

And I can never experience that again.

But I had it and I have gratitude for that.

And so that's really the way that I experience my grief now when I remember my amazing love story with this man who was the father of my four kids.

And meeting him at 18 and going through college and all of the craziness of our life as first dual military family and then the journey that ensued once he was this active beauty person.

There's just so much sweetness and so much gratitude that it happened.

And that for a while he was an incredible part of my story.

And I think that's something that we need to really examine in our culture when we talk about grief because there's such a permanence assumed for grief that it will be pain for the rest of forever.

And I think it's somewhat inherent to our resistance to our grief in the first place that keeps us from eventually ultimately being able to experience it as sweet gratitude for what has been.

This so closely echoes a sentiment from a previous podcast guest named Caleb Wilde who wrote the book Confessions of a Funeral Director and he writes that we are all mosaics of each other.

And so to carry those memories that can never happen again within our minds and our bodies and our souls onward is kind of how grief continues to exist,

How our loved ones continue to exist inclusive of us.

And I wholeheartedly admit I'm in a place where I have about 30 to 40 percent of my memories that are that sweet cookie dough baking kind of feeling and there's still a whole whole bunch that I am wrestling with.

And so even just from our previous conversation of shifting from a place of surviving with these hard memories versus someday leaning into a joyfulness or a gratitude or like a wholehearted showing up-ness with them is really exciting.

Like the prospect of someday my story getting to where your story is is really exciting even if I have no idea how that's gonna happen yet.

So thank you for sharing that.

That was just kind of that was personal to me because as you were talking I was like,

Wow not everything I have is quite like that yet but I believe it could be true in the future.

And I think so much this is such a hard question but people are like so quick to dissolve the role of faith in grief because they equate it with religion.

And I have learned in my own world that faith in grief doesn't look like believing in God or a higher power or the will of the universe or however you want to phrase it.

It's faith and belief that one day things will look different from the way that they look right now.

And when we're moving around our everyday like that's inevitable.

We know tomorrow is gonna be different from today but grief has this grief is kind of magical in a way and can cause us to think that things will always be this way like you said always be doing nothing but pain grief is nothing but pain.

And I'm just so touched by that story thank you for sharing that and for Reid's I'm just like influence on your sphere I just get this this whole picture and I love this phrase of a caseworker on your behalf because what a riot is that I've got him I don't know what he looks like but he's carrying around little file folders and following around the universe in my mind.

Well think sexy fighter pilot carrying around fighter folders you don't have a better idea.

Top Gun right?

Oh yeah Highway to the Dangers absolutely I love that song.

Yeah you know you said something just now that I actually two things if I can just super quickly go there.

One is it's easy to hear me say that my grief is sweet nostalgic gratitude but I think part of what's challenging in grief is that not all the memories are sweet.

There's a lot of unfinished business and there's pain that was there in a relationship before the death happened and so part of what's challenging is in a world that wants to paint the aftermath of someone's life with rose-colored glasses there's a lot of complexity to your grief.

Because on the one hand you desperately miss them and on the other hand there's a lot of unfinished business with the person who's there no longer there to engage in the resolution of it and this applies as much to spouses as it does to children and mothers and anybody you ever loved and so I guess I just wanted to hold space and acknowledge the reality that like you said and you know like we've talked about that engaging with your grief intentionally is a really huge part of navigating the path toward the rest of your story and that does mean it often engaging with the bittersweet as well as the sweet and I think it's important to name that because so often people can feel shame around their love story or shame around their relationship with the person who died and to exonerate people of the guilt of the unfinished business instead creating an invitation that you can continue to engage with that unfinished business in a way that can bring it to resolution as a really meaningful part of the healing process.

The other note that I was making you know you talked about faith and belief that things can get better and I think that it's a really important distinction because often it's the search for hope.

I want hope.

I have hope and it's important to name that hope can't just be a wish on a star.

To me hope is an actionable path and it's one that requires us like I said earlier to take small perhaps micro steps forward on behalf of ourselves in the direction of hope and so part of the work that I do with people is really bringing into clarity what it is they hope for so that they know where to begin placing their footsteps as they move forward and then it sounds really hard right because initially when we're in such a place of pain hope sounds often like I just want to feel better than this.

I don't even know what I want.

I can't even fathom my future.

I just don't want to feel this terrible and so very quickly that becomes clarity in this moment.

Hope for you means feeling some relief from the intensity of it and so we work toward that and when we feel relief from the intensity there's a little bigger window of clarity available to us right.

The next thing is I just want to feel connection with another person and so then we put our attention and our awareness into creating that as reality and so when I say micro steps on behalf of your future self I'm not saying like read every self-help book on the planet and like make a vision board because you think those things might solve your problem.

It's really really turning inward and getting still and getting quiet and calling in clarity about what is the next most important thing that I can do on behalf of my future self and sometimes that looks like give your permission to stay in bed for the whole weekend until you know you're done and then give yourself permission to get out of bed and go for a walk.

It doesn't have to be figuring it all out today.

You don't have to enroll in a nursing program.

You don't have to move across the country.

You can do those things and if you feel clear that they're important for the path forward great but I think so often we force something onto our path that gives us hope but we're choosing not in the direction of our best self.

We're clinging to hope because we think it'll fix the problem.

Does that make sense?

Yeah,

That makes perfect sense because the world likes to stop at hope.

They're like just hope,

Just have faith,

Just believe and I'm like and then what?

And then you keep calling and carry on and fake it till you make it.

That's you know that's the one on the street.

Yeah and it makes you crazy when people say it because I love I wrote down again in all capital letters this is an all-caps conversation in my notebook is hope is an actionable path because this notion that hope is not a noun it's a verb.

You're in the process of hoping as you're meandering through grief and navigating what life is like in the aftermath of the worst thing that has ever happened to you and I think it goes back to reframing what goals are and it's like not the destination it's a part of the process and that's I mean that's the first time that has ever escaped my lips that way and that feels really true.

Yeah there's an African proverb that says you have to move your feet while you pray or something like that and it just really strikes me as true so often hope feels like giving our power away to an institution or you know God to spare us from this misery and when we involve ourself in the process there's this incredible shift of empowerment that happens from within us where we're an active part of our healing process and again it's so hard to know like where do I even start because there isn't really an accessible model for healing in our culture because the expectation is time heals all keep calm and carry on and when we insert ourself into the process with somebody who can help us find our way it becomes easier to know where to again like where to place the next step not based on somebody else's opinion but guided from within you what is the next most important thing that I need right now all judgment aside all fear of judgment aside all other people's opinions aside what do I know is the next most important thing in my life to pay attention to to nurture and despite the fact that most people will tell you that it's all about the hustle get a new job get a new boyfriend get a new dog get a new hobby get a new haircut that's sort of like the word on the street is this is what will help you heal um my advice for people is to slow down and to create more stillness and it will probably feel like failure initially but you will get so much internal guidance from that place and have so much clarity about where to put your energy in the direction of your healing you